Aftermath 2 - The Age of Wisdom
by Vol lady
Summary: When I wrote "Aftermath," Nick and Jarrod said they were fine with it but they said "You've left someone out. Keep writing." They seem to be ok with this, which centers on Audra and Heath, but I suppose I'll hear from them if they're not.


AFTERMATH 2 – The Age of Wisdom

Audra watched him from the terrace, as she had been doing secretly for nearly three weeks, when he'd take off on these slow walks alone after dinner. He would pass from the light of the house windows, into the shadows and then back into the light, over and over again, his hands shoved into his pockets, head bowed, looking for all the world like a sleepwalker. He often would not come back into the house until the night chill seemed to make him stiffen up, and then Audra would slip back into the nearest door, certain he'd never seen her and assuming no one else had either.

She was well aware there were things going on that she didn't know about and she was flat mad about it. When Nick and Heath had brought him home, she had helped to get him fed and to sleep, like she was the elder and he was the younger sibling, and she'd done it without any questions. That had been nearly a month ago, and he was still haunting the house like a ghost. Everyone else seemed to be trying to act as if everything was normal. When she voiced her worries, she would just be told that losing a spouse was one of the hardest things in life to deal with, but she knew it was more than that. Someone else had to have noticed these nightly walks. Someone had to have seen that he never smiled – never. There was more to this than grief.

At first she thought she might not understand because she had never met Beth and was not here when she was killed and Jarrod took off after the man who killed her. Audra had been in Philadelphia and hurried home expecting to find a celebration. Instead, she found Beth dead, her brothers missing and her mother more distraught than she had ever seen her. Audra comforted her mother and worried sick about her brothers. When they came home, she had made sure that Nick and Heath were fed and Jarrod, wreck that he was, was cared for, but since then everyone seemed to be shutting her out. Jarrod had closed up almost completely, and everyone else was worried about him. Something had happened out there on the trail and was still happening here, but she was being blocked out from knowing it.

She didn't deserve that, but how could she complain about it now? It was Jarrod who mattered. Something far too serious was going on for her to even bring her own feelings into the open, so she put them aside and concentrated on her brother.

She saw him come back into the house by the front door and she slipped back in through the study, closing the door behind her. She was startled to find someone sitting in the chair there - Heath, apparently just as startled to see her, as he jumped when she closed the door. He was sitting with a book in his lap. He had fallen asleep.

"Oh," he said, bleary, getting up. "What time is it?"

Audra glanced at the clock on the mantle. "Past ten. I thought you'd be in bed by now."

Heath got up. "I was planning to be, but then I started reading and next thing I know, you're here. You should be in bed, too."

"I know," she said quietly, and wondered if she should tell Heath now about how she'd been watching Jarrod.

He took the question away from her. Lifting her chin, he said, "Hey. What's got you up and around at this hour?"

She hesitated, but decided to say it. "I've been watching Jarrod. He walks around the yard every night by himself, just walking. Sometimes he comes back in after a few minutes, but mostly it's an hour or more."

Heath gave her the pat answer. "It's hard to lose your wife, and Jarrod scarcely had time to be a husband. It's going to take him a while."

No, I'm not accepting that anymore, Audra said to herself. "It's more than that, isn't it? I know he went off after the man who killed her and you and Nick went off after him, but something happened while you were out there. You all know something that I don't know and it's still haunting all of you. You leave me out here in the cold, wondering why our family is falling apart, but you won't tell me what's going on."

Heath shook his head quickly. "Our family isn't falling apart. It's a rough time, but we're strong enough to take it and we'll be all right."

"But I don't know how to help. You won't talk to me. You all treat Jarrod like he's going to explode at any moment, but you won't tell me how I can help."

"How you can help is by being you, being normal, being loving and kind and being like nothing is wrong. Don't you see, you're the glue holding us together through this. If we tell you everything that happened – you wouldn't be you. By being you, by being unaffected by all the things that happened while you were away, you're the light that's guiding us through this."

His words sounded patronizing to her. "Heath, I'm not a child. Don't tell me pretty words when the situation isn't pretty. I want to tell Jarrod how badly I feel about not meeting Beth and not being here when she was killed, but I don't know how to bring it up. I'm getting like you. I'm afraid he'll explode or something – ridiculous."

Heath swallowed. She wasn't far off the truth, but it wasn't his place to tell her everything that had happened and was happening. He really didn't know whose place it was, but he knew it wasn't his, not now anyway. He took her into his arms. "Life will get back to normal. We are still doing all the normal things we have to do around here, and at some point, Jarrod will even start going back to his office. It just takes time. Be you. Be our guide back to being normal, and we'll be fine. And Jarrod will be fine. Have faith in that and stop worrying."

"I'll stop if you stop." It was not a flip answer. It was a challenge.

Heath let her go and hung his head. "I'd tell you all about it if I could, Audra. I'm not keeping anything from you because I think you're a child and can't handle it. It's just – not my place."

Audra looked closely at him. "He hurt you, didn't he?"

"No, he didn't hurt me," Heath said quickly, and then realized it was probably a lie. When a brother points a gun your way, it hurts you, but… "He hurt himself."

"How?"

Heath closed his eyes and shook his head. "Bad," he said. "Just bad. But he'll heal. We all will."

Audra was as confused and frustrated as she ever was. "And I stay in the dark. How am I supposed to help him, Heath? How am I supposed to help him when I really don't know what's wrong? And how am I supposed to heal?"

"Just by being you – loving and kind. Just be you."

More platitudes. Audra shook her head angrily and left the room.

Heath felt like an idiot, a traitor and an idiot. But he was tired and he couldn't deal with it anymore tonight. He left his book in the chair and wandered on up to bed.

XXXXXXXX

Jarrod didn't always come down early to breakfast, and he didn't the next morning. Audra was still feeling surly, and having the rest of the family around the table without Jarrod being there gave her an opportunity she was not going to pass up. Heath saw it coming several minutes before it came, and he tried to catch her eye, but it wasn't going to happen.

"I'd like to talk about Jarrod," she said bluntly.

Her mother, Nick and Heath all looked at one another. Nick said, "What do you want to talk about?"

"Everything," Audra said. "I want to know what's going on."

"Jarrod is trying to recover from losing his wife," Victoria said plainly.

"There's more," Audra said right away. "There's more none of you are talking about, and I – "

"Feel left out," Victoria jumped right in on her sentence.

"I feel like you're not telling me something because you don't think I'm capable of handling it," Audra said. "I'm not a child anymore. I love my brother, and something is dreadfully wrong with him and – "

"No, it's not," Nick jumped in. "He's not as well as he's going to be, but there's nothing dreadfully wrong with him. He's had a bad time of it lately, that's all."

"Hogwash," Audra said.

Everyone looked up in shock.

"Hogwash!" she repeated.

"I don't like that kind of language at the table, Audra," Victoria said.

"I'm sorry, but I'm angry," Audra said. "I want to help but no one will tell me how. How can I help when I don't know what's wrong and I don't know why you won't tell me?"

"First, you talk to me before you talk to everybody else," came from the doorway.

Jarrod stood there, having come in on the end of the conversation when no one was looking his way.

He said, "Second, you accept what I say as what I want you to know about. Third, you respect me enough to believe that you can help me whether you know everything everyone else does or not. Do I need to go into fourth, fifth and sixth?"

He sounded every bit like the lawyer cross-examining a witness. Audra slumped. "I'm sorry. I've been speaking out of place. Excuse me."

She got up from the table and walked right by her oldest brother, heading for anywhere but where anyone else was. Victoria started to get up, but Heath beat her to it, saying, "Let me."

Heath got up as Jarrod came in and sat down at the table. Nick said, "You were a little rough on her, Pappy."

Jarrod glared at him.

"All right, this is enough," Victoria said. "I don't care anymore who's keeping what secrets from whom or what happened when or where. We will be civil to one another in this house as long as I'm present. Shout it out or bludgeon it out when I'm not around, but while I'm here, you will act like gentlemen. Understand?"

Jarrod nodded without hesitation and without looking up. Nick nodded eventually.

In the foyer, Heath caught up to Audra and quickly took her into his arms. He expected her to be crying, but she wasn't. "How can I talk to him when he's behind a stone wall all the time?" she blasted out. "How can I talk to anybody else when they won't talk to me?"

"Listen," Heath said. "I can't talk to you about it because it's not my place. It's Jarrod's, and whether he opens up to you or not is up to him, not to me and not to you. Just believe me when I tell you this. He has gone through the worst time I've ever seen a man go through, and it may be he's not telling you about it because he's ashamed. It's that simple. Maybe, just maybe, he will talk to you about it now that this has all busted out, but he's the only one who will tell you, and if he doesn't that's his right. You have to accept that. There are things he hasn't told me, and I have to accept that. There are things he hasn't even told mother and probably Nick, too, and we all have to accept that."

"All right," Audra said quietly.

"I meant it when I said you can help him best by being you – kind, loving you. Accept him for who he is right now, and you'll help him more than you'll ever know."

Audra put her arms around Heath's neck. "I just want him back."

Heath hugged her. "We all do, and he will come back. I know that as sure as I know the sun will come up tomorrow morning."

Audra pulled away, smiling. "Thank you, Heath."

He gave her a kiss on the forehead. Audra returned it with one on his cheek, and then she went out the front door. Heath went back into the dining room, where all heads were looking down at their plates in silence. Heath sat back down to finish his breakfast.

Jarrod finally said, "Is she all right?"

"Yeah, she's fine," Heath said. "Went out to the barns. Have I missed the tongue-lashing?"

Nick said, "Uh-huh."

Victoria smiled a little. "You didn't earn one."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Audra worked her frustration out in the barn, grooming her mare, even tending to Jarrod's horse. She thought a lot about what Heath had said to her, both last night and this morning. She hated the idea that Jarrod had been going through the worst things Heath had ever seen, but she gradually lost her need to know what that was. Instead, she began to think about what good she could do him even if she never knew what they were all keeping from her.

Tending horses always calmed her down. They would look at her with those big eyes and seem to read her soul. If she was upset, there was always sympathy in their eyes. If she was happy, they were always happy, too. It was good to be with them, and not to be with people for a while.

By the time he came in, she was fully content with herself. When he said, "I owe you an explanation," she wasn't surprised to hear his voice.

She turned around and smiled, even though he was not smiling. "No, you don't," she said. "I owe you an apology."

"No, no, Audra," Jarrod said and came closer. "I've been a – monster of a man for a long, long time, and I'm doing nothing but hurting the people I love. Please forgive me."

"There's nothing to forgive," Audra said. "Somehow you've gotten lost. We'll find you again."

Jarrod squeezed his eyes closed, and for a moment, he looked like he was going to fall apart, but he caught the sob before it escaped and he found Audra's arms around him before he looked up again. She was smiling. She ran her hands through his dark hair, and he hugged her again. "You're a far more wonderful sister than I deserve."

"I just wish I knew how to help you more, Jarrod," she said.

Jarrod backed up but kept one arm around her. "There is something you can do for me."

"What?" she asked.

"Do you remember last year, after the explosion, when I couldn't see? You would read to me."

Audra smiled. "Yes, I remember."

"Read to me now. I know I can see and I can read by myself, but it was sweet having you read to me. I'd like to hear your voice again now. How about it?"

There was only a faint smile on his face, but it lit up her heart. She took his hand, and he let her lead him into the house and to the library. "What shall I read?" she asked and picked up the book Heath had left on the chair the night before. "'A Tale of Two Cities'?"

Jarrod sat down on the sofa there, saying, "Yes, from the beginning."

Audra sat beside him, and he closed his eyes and rested his head back. Audra opened the book and began reading. "'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…'"

THE END


End file.
